How do I voice my complaint with regard to the email service?

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This topic is being closed as it has covered too many different issues, that are largely resolved. It has grown to the point that valid information has become too difficult to locate. Feel free to post a new question if necessary.

If you would like your voice to be heard you are welcome to voice your complaint here. If you do have questions on our email service or other products feel free to post to the relevant threads.

It looks like I would have to pay for a service that I have already paid you to provide for many years now. Why did you not use the money I have given you for over ten years to improve your system and keep it working? I do not have time for a learning curve to find and use a new e-mail service. Seems like it might be better to spend that time looking for a new service provider that includes a functioning e-mail service.

Why don't Homestead cover the charges when services are switched, since we have already paid Homestead. If it's your partners domain I am sure you can work this out. I have lost 2 days of business because of this.

This is a typical problem with companies that get too big too fast without proper infrastructure. There seems to be no valid tech support capable of resolving a simple issue like spam filtering. Improving their tech department would mean larger expenditure so that will never happen. Better to keep our money in their pockets.
My solution, go to gmail or similar.

The Intuit Homestead Email problem solution is to pay their "partner" (so we can assume Intuit gets a referral commission for email service that was supposed to be included in the service contractT&C without losing its monthly vig?

Hello Gerard5809, To be clear, we are not removing any of our services, or forcing you to switch email providers. We are only providing this as an option. If you do choose to switch to an email provider, you are welcome to choose any company you wish.

Also, we have just received an update on the current email situation. We are awaiting some brand new email servers. You can see the announcement here: http://status.homestead.com/

Hello Gerard5809, To be clear, we are no longer affiliated with Intuit, removing any of your services, or forcing you to switch email providers. We are only providing this as an option. If you do choose to switch to an email provider, you are welcome to choose any company you wish.

Also, we have just received an update on the current email situation. We are awaiting some brand new email servers. You can see the announcement here: http://status.homestead.com/

Mike,
No, apparently Homestead is now owned by Endurance International Group, which also apparently owns Domain.com, to which Homestead has provided specific links to customers for email service that will, to the extent people respond, result in a revenue increase. And WSJ says Endurance just filed an IPO this month

Domain.com and Homestead are indeed owned by the same company. We do not wish to lose your business but you are at liberty to choose any other company you wish for your email service. This is definitely not a motive to make more money. Also, if you have not read the announcement I posted above you may wish to. As you can see we are making progress in getting this issue fixed.

Then, why aren't you giving us free email service from doman.com, a company you already own? Especially since the email service you provide isn't working? And...why would I switch to domain.com, your company, which may be having the same problems there?

We don't own Domain.com. Even though we may have the same parent company we operate as completely separate businesses. I agree that in most cases a refund or credit is fair, but we need to handle these one at at time. I realize there are very long hold times due to this issue, you are welcome to contact a live support agent when it is more convenient and discuss are credit or refund. We are happy to do what is fair and reasonable.

Exactly, if your both owned by the same parent company, and Homestead cannot fix the problem, how dare you send us there and charge us more. Your company should be eating the cost and resolving the problem by forwarding all accounts there. What the heck have you all been doing the last few months. And what measures were put into place to insure we weren't blacklisted again? Obviously none, since it's happening again. And your finally buying a new email server? Seriously???

I went from not being able to access my email account at all on Sunday. Then I was receiving but couldn't sign in because it kept saying my password was wrong. Then the whole system server appeared to be down so I couldn't even log in to homestead.com. NOW I can get it but it's taking over 5 minutes JUST TO DELETE AN EMAIL FROM MY INBOX. WTF is going on over there??? All the responses to the customer (businesses) I've seen from the "support" team are pandering and vague. We are paying for a service here - aren't we at least entitled to a decent response and timely update????

If the problem was installing a new spam filter... then uninstall it. I've never heard of a company having email problems let alone having it span multiple days. This is really bad and I'm baffled a work around (other than having people change their email, buy new service etc.) isn't available. As an engineer myself, it's near impossible to believe. You should take the hit and compensate every one of your customers. As reiterated in multiple other threads there has been such poor communication on the topic. Pretty bad guys. As the owner of a small farm, this is my peak season. No idea how you compensate for loss of business but I have lost... tough crap as a small business right? If anyone has friends/colleagues that might host somewhere else and regard them highly I'd be interested in knowing. This is one of the first issues I've really felt with homestead but the way it's being handled has me not wanting to experience it again.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Intuit............. I am sure they are simply setting us up for some $5 charge to "protect us" from the evils of hackers or ourselves or daisies that grow in the field next to your farm or ?????

Intuit.......... the Nickle and Dime You to Death Corporation.

They are the worst thing to happen to Homestead ever!!!!!! Matter of fact, the worst thing to happen to computing itself.

LOL, I've actually had worse hosts, Peter, they do exist. They just cost slightly less. ;) That said, I'm sure they will charge us more for fixing the email, and then tell us our lost business is our problem because the TOS said so. Can't wait for the class action suit if they try.

OK, first, since losing one customer is the same cost as actually about 3-4 years of hosting, how about a free year of hosting? Further, you will need to supply a personal apology to every person I've so much as communicated with in the last 2 months, from your CEO, outlining that, since I often work with traumatized people who are going through relationship problems, that I am not the cause of their rejection, it is merely your own ineptitude at running a business.

If the issue isn't cleared up by tomorrow, I'm taking my complaint to the attorney general. I've lost thousands thanks to your stupidity. This does not take this long to fix. It's a global problem. You need to personally apologize to every single person who missed out on sending an email.

Strange that when this happened, an email I never share started getting loads of spam too. I'd sure hate to see the legal hot water you are getting you already in. Persisting in this asinine state will only make things worse. No TOS will save your butts, and the longer it goes on, the more likely it is all of your employees will be living off of handouts and in the streets, and begging for welfare. Think about that.

We would like to see evidence that Intuit/Homestead is sufficiently concerned about its customers and the harm being caused to its customers' businesses. Apologies and vague reassurances are inadequate.

Hi, This is Kat from the Adams Avenue Business Association. We put on a 100,000 person event this weekend and this is the absolute WORST week to not be able to send and receive emails. It is actually unbelievable that this is happening this week to us. I am taking time out of my incredibly busy day to tell you that this is unacceptable and we will be changing hosts after the Street Fair is over.

We are very sorry that we do not have time to respond to each and everyone of these posts in a timely manner. If you have not had time to review the Announcement page we do have an estimated ETA but it will take a few days to install and configure the new servers.

Also, several of you have been rightfully inquiring about compensation, refunds etc. We certainly do not expect you to pay for service that has failed you. You are welcome to call us to discuss a refund or credit. We will need to evaluate your situations on a personal level as each of you may be affected differently. We will do our best to work out a resolution that is fair and reasonable.

I will apologize before hand for the lengthy telephone queues, but you are welcome to call us at 800-710-1998 or contact a Live Chat agent here.

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This has ALREADY been going on for over a week. Homestead first admitted there was a email server problem on September 17th. This is the second massive email problem that has affected me in just a few month's time.

There is no possible way to explain the damage to my business caused by delayed, incomplete or bounced back emails (that make it look like my own fault for the problem even). I have no way of reaching clients and nothing to tell them if I could.

And your solution is to PAY more money to a partner of yours, or to spend hours on the phone trying to call you for money off on my useless account??!! It's unacceptable.

My biggest complaint with the last fiasco, that caused me email issues for several months, was the way it was handled - poor communication, slow to realize the problem, slow to fix the problem and no sense of urgency or solution for your customers. Sad to see that hasn't changed.

I have just heard from a customer that "Hello Kathy--both the following message and the previous one didn't go through, both times the message was sender quota exceeded.
So I found this address on your website and am hoping that it will go through...
KGW" Now even homestead is making you look bad. At lesast there the spam goes into the hunk folder instead of the inbox. I guess the spam can get thru but my orders have been blocked. I am now losing sales and customers.
How can I define compensation for orders that I cannot know I have missed. This is almost as bad as the denial of service fiasco in December. What a way to run a business. Don't you beta test a new spam filter before you inflict it on your customers? Most people come to you because they can do their own site. I do not have an IT department to figure out a patch for your shoddy service.

Make that Hotmail is making Homestead look bad. Perhaps I am the only customer left that remembers December 2011 Everyone else probably found another service provider to host their site. An expensive lesson then and even more now that my business survived and continued to grow until it was shut down again by Homestead. One year of free service was scant recompense for orders lost.

My customer who finally contactacted me thru my backup e-mail sent this to help your IT people resolve the problem. I kept the hotmail account on my page when I left it for the then less spam-filled Homestead e-mail. I did not want to loose returning customers who only had the earlier e-mail. I cannot imagine how many customers will not be as persistent. Certainly new customers would just move on to another supplier. This former customer was loyal enough to persist in trying to respond to my letter. During the 2011 denial of service fiasco I tried to contact customers and then had my e-mail account closed in mid December. I was accused of spam when I tried to alert my customers to the problem with the site and suggested alternate ways to access the info and place holiday orders. I hate the learning curve of a new provider but this is getting very expensive.

I have two complaints for board members that their email is being rejected. In addition, one of my emails has been receiving an exorbitant amount of spam all of a sudden since last week: cwestcott@idahomentalhealthcounselor.org. Is this related?

Well at least spamhaus is getting removed because it is a major mistake to have used them as a spam filter.

What would be useful is if were possible to identify and forward all of the bounced emails so that we know who has been attempting to contact us. Without this we are completely in the dark as to how much business disruption and loss we may have suffered.

I have so much spam I can't find the non processed protein. It is literally difficult to find the actual emails among all the clutter. Emails getting kicked back. I don't know if bids have gotten to clients without calling and looking like an idiot. This is a colossal mess. I really hope Homestead has everyone including the pet monkey working 24/7 to resolve this.

We are LOCAL GOVERNMENT, we trusted Homestead to be a solid company. We cannot send out emergency notices, road closures, etc to the public.
Our State & Federal agencies need to be able to email data to us!
Our site & email with Homestead is paid for with TAXPAYERS money. What will happen now??

Hi Mallory6540, Although we are working on getting the system up and running as soon as possible, you may want to look at a different email services that specializes in doing email blasts to large lists. When you CC a large list of people using an ordinary email client your emails will almost always get marked as spam. If you use a service such as Constant Contact, or Verticle Response, they use a different technology that makes it appear as though you are emailing one individual at a time and it prevents you from getting blacklisted.

You have put me practically out of business with your email servers down and experiencing trouble for a week. I depend on my email billing, client engagement delivery and QuickBooks interface for virtually everything I do. Without the email servers doing the job, I am in trouble with lots of needs. If we aren't back up by the weekend, I am going to have to move my business somewhere reliable. Frankly, this should have never happened on this scale, along with the spam program issues. I have also been inundated with spam emails by the hundreds on my smartphone and Outlook since last week. I am really disgusted with this. R Moore CPA

Mike,
Here is what I would like to hear an answer to - how will we know if we have received all of the emails that were previously blocked? OR will we even receive backlogged emails?

Also, how do we know which of our emails were not sent - some seem to sneak through and make it to the intended recipient - others get lost in cyberspace.

I am reticent to make a global statement on my website about email service being down or resend emails to which I have not received a response as it brings into question my abilities as a business owner to make smart partner choices - like choosing Homestead for my email service.

I agree with all of the other customers who have posted. This upgrade is long overdue and better be the end of the issues with Homestead email. Reportedly this process has been in the works for over a year - but I guess I was being lied to then since clearly nothing was done to fix the issue. Am I being lied to now? When is it time to jump ship?

Why would so much effort be placed in the ability to create websites without the infrastructure to support the ecommerce that brings? Very short sided and disappointing.

Hi Greg2098, Unfortunately there is not a way to tell how many emails that will not be delivered. It depends on where they are being sent from and what type of email system is used. Some systems will try to redeliver emails a certain number of times over a period of time or days. Others may not reattempt after the first failure. It is for this reason that we have suggested several days ago, that if your business is extremely dependent on email, then you may want to recreate the email account with a different provider.

This upgrade is indeed long over due, and is just the first of many new things on our road-map. I know this is very frustrating for most of you but we are very confident that you'll be very pleased with some of the changes we have coming in months ahead.

Mike: I have been a user of Homestead for roughly 2 years now, connecting to your firm through my relationship with Intuit. I appreciate your updates, but have to share that I am dumbfounded by the length of time this has taken to remediate. By my measure, it has been more than a week since email first started to be slow, or simply not work. I'd estimate that my productivity has been cut by 30% or more for more than a week...that represents an incredible cost to my business.

Small business, which I sense represent the majority of your firm's business, struggle daily to appear credible and professional when interacting with others in the business community. Being unable to respond promptly to emails, unable to send messages with attachments, or simply not receiving inbound emails...this makes us look like we're in the bush leagues compared to larger businesses. The actual and opportunity cost of being stuck with that image can't be overstated.

Please, fix these problems expeditiously or we will move our business to another provider.

I was thinking it was just the spam issue, but today I have had 3 customers who didn't get my emails that I had shipped their orders - I shipped their orders on Monday and they just got the the emails today. The emails they replied to me on, showed the date as I had written them this morning when I had actually written them on Monday. Also other communication that they were waiting for that didn't get there until today. Caused more time to be spent smoothing things out... Come on Homestead. Get it together.

Mike - I'm sorry but this is just B*** S***! I'm trying to understand...so I figure okay I'll set up Zoho and as soon as Homestead is back up I'll switch back. An inconvenience but not the end of the world. So, I go through the Zoho set up and...their site crashes!!!!!!!!!! I'm trying to run a business and I have no idea which of my customer's have received my proposals, accepted them or have told me to F*** off because they think I am not responding...THANKS!!

I have been with Homestead, Mike, since Martha Stewart recommended Homestead not long after it was founded. Since Intuit took it over, the service has all gone downhill. I used to recommend Homestead all the time, now I warn people away. If I ever have time to find another domain host with email service that I can manage without html, I am moving all five of my accounts. Customer service is worthless, with people who sound like trainees cutting and pasting scripts into interminable chat sessions, reps who cannot even construct an English sentence with correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Management needs to take a long hard look at how this company has been run aground. One cannot see how a rosey future could exist with so many unsatisfied customers.

My email is running perfectly now since I switched to plan B and set up a new account with ntlbusiness. Unlike Homestead I have been able to switch to an alternative option that has minimised disruption. My customers are happy.

I did originally set up ntl as a temporary solution but I have to admit that I have warmed to the idea of knowing that the emails I am sending are being received by my customers. It is also nice to be able to receive their replies without the embarrassing misunderstanding that they thing I can't be bothered to reply.

Homestead will really need to up its game to keep me as an email customer - something that at this moment in time looks unlikely. It has been a week now since the start of these woes and I truly can't stress enough how disappointing this is.

Hmmmm...I keep getting emails showing replies other people have made talking about this ongoing problem, but when I come to this page, the new replies are gone.. How come? This is an ongoing problem and everyone needs to know what's going on..
This morning I pulled in 120 emails and 20 of them were good, the rest spam. I've also discovered that many of my emails are coming in 2 or 3 days after customer's have sent them, and I can only assume the same is happening with my replies, which will make my customers think I'm not very quick to contact them.
It's now been 8 days since I first wrote Homestead about this problem.. When can we expect this to be fixed??????? Days of weeding through all this spam is getting more and more annoying..
And you know what really annoys me? When I first wrote about this, I assumed it was just me, that I had done something wrong or my email account had been hacked, and when I used instant chat with a customer service rep, they never once mentioned that this was a problem with Homestead. And then when I wrote first wrote on this forum, they didn't fess up and admit this was a problem until a bunch of people started complaining.. Not cool homestead!!!You wasted a lot of my time. If you had just admitted this was your problem and there was nothing I could do about it, it would have been a lot better...